The Stella plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−1° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 0° in 1940.
Stella’s center stands about 1,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 950 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Admire Group (shale, limestone), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 58×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Stella reaches the Gulf of America by way of Muddy Creek, the Big Nemaha, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,680 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Stella; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Stella has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Stella normally reaches 52° and falls to 30°. The record high is 77°, in 1990; the record low 1°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.55 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Auburn 5 ESE, 10 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
